


endure

by willowcabins



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), Guardians of the Galaxy - All Media Types
Genre: F/F, Pre-Movie(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-13
Updated: 2014-08-13
Packaged: 2018-02-12 23:24:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2128344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/willowcabins/pseuds/willowcabins
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She was the first person in four years to beat Nebula in the dojo with her brittle human flesh. But Nebula was pleased, and she grinned.</p>
            </blockquote>





	endure

**Author's Note:**

> lol some NERD came out of the movie and immediately wrote a fic about incestous disfunctional sisters (scoffs)

_Endure_

Sometimes, she dreams of flesh. She dreams of organic, fallible matter, clothing bones. She dreams of blood, beating, forced through veins by pressure and heart beats. She dreams of breaths, and living cells, and dying matter.

Then she wakes.

/ / /

She was on the border of childhood when a man with a hood rammed a long metallic staff through her chest, and left her shuddering, heaving, on the cold hard surface. She clawed for breaths and gasped names as a symphony of screams echoed through her mind.

By the time he returned to her, the only thing keeping her alive was anger. A burning anger that coloured her eyes and shuddered up her spine.

He noticed her as he was leaving the house.

“You’re still here,” he cooed. “Take her.”

She did not want to be taken.

/ / /

Her mother had taught her how to braid straw together, once. She thought of it a lot, in the beginning. Braids are simpler than bodies.

Imagine a braid made out of straw. One clip with scissors, and it is broken, cut in two.

Imagine a braid made out of straw, with a single stainless steel wire. One clip with scissors, and it’s _almost_ broken. But it holds together, because the wire holds it together.

Imagine a braid made out of stainless steel wires. Perhaps there is one piece of straw; perhaps there isn’t anymore. She was sure of it once. She’s not anymore. She flexes her hand. If someone cut a stainless steel braid with scissors, they would break.

It someone cut Nebula, they would break.

She’s steel, now.

/ / /

“And now you are here.” She was in a large room; her body shuddered. There was something _inside_ her; she thrashed against the ropes that help her up.

“Where am I?” she gasped.

“Here,” He replied cryptically.

“Why am I here?” She hissed. He smiled, almost indulgently.

“I like you.” He said. It was not a compliment. It was not a good thing. She began thrashing again. He smiled, and she realised his teeth were too white in his face. “Stop, child.” He commanded. She looked up at him, held his stern gaze, and thrashed _harder._

“I like you,” he repeated, pressing a remote.

Pure pain _shot_ through her; electricity tore up through her spine, and she screamed. He grinned, but did not stop pressing the button. She could not see anymore; the pain seemed to tear apart her body, and every living thing inside her screamed.

“I made you new, my child.” He was too close to her, all of a sudden. She shuddered, but he didn’t step away. And she didn’t thrash, for fear of inciting Pain again. “You have a new heart, because I destroyed the old one. Let me remind you how hearts beat.”

/ / /

Skin is not strong. The elasticity of human skin gives way after only 350 fps of pressure. Her skin was better, thicker, stronger. And yet. “Look at how it gives,” he had cooed, and she had understood. Skin is not armour.

So she _made_ her skin armour.

It required burning, and acid, and peeling, and thin ( _thin_ ) metal plates, inserted carefully between the layers of organic she had yet to get rid of. Green hands had traces clinical, careful, scars. “Did it hurt?” a soft voice asked.

It had hurt, but it had hurt _less_. Anyway, she was stronger now.

“No.”

“Liar,” she murmured, but it was affectionate, and hot in her ears.

Sometimes, when Gamora hissed things along her body, she wished she was _more_ organic, if only to _feel_ more.

And then she remembered.

/ / /

He untied her, and showed her a rack of weapons. “Pick one,” he commanded.

Back at home, on the planet she had almost _almost_ forgotten, they used swords. So she picked one up. He laughed.

She tried to fight. But his staff sliced through metal and hit her in the chest again.

This was the day she learned even metal was fallible.

/ / /

“Why do we have to survive?” Gamora whispers into her ears as she traces lines down her face. Nebula smiles, almost savagely, and turns to her, untangling their limbs in bed.

“We have to _show them_. Show _him_.”

“Show him _what_?”

“That we are more than stardust and badly matched carbon molecules.”

“What are we then?”

“Well, I am a vast, indestructible cloud of gas. I am a galaxy, embodied in a nimbus of gas. What are you?”

“I am Gamora.”

“What is that?”

“Fear.”

“Then you have survived. Well.”

“To be his tool?” Now she does grin, and there is no lenience in her countenance. Gamora tilts her head at her.

“He shaped us into weapons, didn’t he?” Nebula asks quietly. Gamora nods quietly. Nebula bares her teeth. “So we fight.”

/ / /

It was the only weapon he didn’t destroy. “Mutability,” he said happily, is the key. And isn’t that what electricity is all about? A form of energy resulting from the existence of charged particles that dynamically interacts to become a current. She looked down at the flashing staff in her hand and tilted her head.

Perhaps he was right.

She flexed her new hand.

He _was_ right.

/ / /

She was the first person in four years to beat Nebula in the dojo with her brittle flesh. But Nebula was pleased, and she grinned.

“Who are you?” she demanded.

“I’m new,” she replied. Nebula sneered.

“Are you more than that?” she asked.

“Not right now.”

/ / /

She became someone, and Nebula _almost_ liked her. “Have you chosen your name yet?” She sneered. She tilted her head, and lunged forward; Gamora parried, almost effortlessly. She disarmed her almost too fast; Nebula snarled and slammed into her with more force than decorum dictated. Gamora gasped, but used Nebula’s strength against her and flipped her over her body. Nebula clung to her and Gamora was dragged to the ground. She tried to stand, but Nebula slammed into her and landed on top of her. Gamora smirked from under Nebula.

“I have a name,” she hissed.

“A feeble name,” Nebula sneered.

Later, when Nebula was hissing that name in an urgent impatience, grinding her cunt into a smirking pair of green lips, Gamora paused thoughtfully.

“Looks like you like my name now,” she purred, leaning her cheek against the inside of Nebula’s thigh.

“Shut _up_ ,” Nebula hissed. Gamora smirked, and then put her mouth to a better use again.

 

**Author's Note:**

> It is the same!--For, be it joy or sorrow,  
> The path of its departure still is free:  
> Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow;  
> Nought may endure but Mutability.


End file.
